Nowadays, imitation products are getting more and more common and it is getting harder to distinguish these products from the original ones. Imitation products are commonly found in garment, electronics etc. sectors as well as in cigarettes and alcohols. Consumers using some of these imitation products cannot get their money's worth, and for some of them, they encounter severe health problems, or even death.
Various countries have banderole regulations for preventing sales of imitation products and penalizing people who sell imitation products. Manufacturers of original products stick the banderoles provided to them by relevant institutions, on the products they manufacture. In this way, it is both made possible to ensure financial auditing and enable consumers to check the banderoles on the products they purchase, and thus raise awareness for using original products. However, security elements found on the presently used banderoles are quite inadequate. Presently used banderoles can easily be imitated and it becomes quite difficult for consumers to notice the difference.
Some improvements are already made, in order to reduce the imitability of the presently used banderoles and provide control systems that are more secure. Another example in the state of the art is the patent application No. WO 0129790 A1. A product control system is disclosed in the document. In the banderole placed on the products, visible numbers are found and among these numbers, various codes are inserted for various manufacturers, wherein the codes are so small that they cannot be seen with the naked eye. Although this improvement has more security elements than the banderoles already used in the prior art, it also has many disadvantages. One of these disadvantages is the difficulty of checking of these small codes found on the banderole which cannot be seen with the naked eye. Moreover, there is still a possibility for imitation product manufacturers to examine and copy these banderoles too, even though it would be harder than copying other prior art banderoles.
With the product according to the present invention, it is aimed to provide a system that is hard to imitate, easy to use by the manufacturer and the consumer, at the same time which also enables determination of used products in addition to imitation products, and makes things easier for the inspection mechanism.